Notes

Liner notes by SoundslikeCornwall:

Side One:
1. SOUTH RAMPART STREET PARADE (Bauduc/Haggart) Leo Feist Mus.
2. YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU (Monaco/McCarthy) F. D. and H.
3. THAT'S MY HOME (featuring Rod Mason) (Armstrong) Darewski Mus.
4. LESTER'S THING (Rod Mason)
5. OLD MILL STREAM (Taylor) Darewski Mus.
6. FLORAL DANCE (Moss) Chappell

Side Two:
1. BY THE BEAUTIFUL SEA (Carroll/Atteridge) F. D. and H.
2. ORIGINAL DIXIELAND ONESTEP (La Rocca) World Mus.
3. SUMMERTIME (featuring Roy Pellett) (Gershwin) M.C.P.S.
4. LONESOME RAILROAD BLUES (arr. Kimball) M.C.P.S.
5. SARATOGA SWING (Bigard/ Ellington) Mills Mus.
6. I WANNA BE LIKE YOU (Sherman) Walt Disney Productions

THE LOBSTER POT restaurant—theatre--jazz club, in the seaside village of Instow, is packed to the doors and beyond, as it is always is on Rod Mason night. Blonde, buxom housewives rub shoulders with bony, hairy students, middle-aged moustaches jiggle under bald heads and the crustaceans in the tank next to the stage wave pinchers rhythmically. The lights are low, the music's high ; the fish netted, paint-peeling, candle-greased, lobster-potted Lobster Pot is in session. This is the atmosphere in which the Rod Mason band thrives. Popular in the far West to a degree that would surely cause the metropolis-bound minds of the compilers of the 'top twenty' to boggle, the band does not care a 'fygge' whether critics or other musicians are impressed by its performance. Rod (surely one of the most 'natural' jazz musicians in the country) believes that jazz is non-intellectual, and is entertaining rather than thought-provoking in his approach to the music.
The repertoire of the group ranges from the New Orleans classics, through standards, to contemporary material, from the Beatles to musical shows. It's a Westcountry band, based in Rod's home town of Plymouth, and regularly playing the most surprising assortment of venues—rugby clubs and discotheques ; fashion shows and Lord Mayors
Balls ; churches and prisons (really !) garden parties and granite quarries ... plus their frequent appearances on local television.
They occasionally visit London and the continent, where they are wildly popular with the Dutch, but they don't like being away from the Sou' West for long. The session you hear on this record is not the entire evening's music. Apart from numbers on this longplayer, some tunes were missed by the recording engineer who, in his other capacity as proprietor of the Lobster Pot, had to abandon his equipment to change the beer barrels at remarkably regular intervals. The session is also notable in that the producer from Sentinel Records, was so overcome by the proceedings that he felt constrained to spend the remainder of the night in a sleeping-bag on the stage. John Oliver's Lobster Pot has seen all kinds of stars and performers, Indian 'sitarists, string quartets, Punch and Judy shows, folk singers, poets, actors, dancers and jazz musicians of all breeds, but the atmosphere is never happier or more lively, more beer is never drunk, more pasties are never eaten than when Rod Mason brings his band BY THE BEAUTIFUL SEA.'
Written by Harland Walshaw

PRODUCED BY SENTINEL RECORDS (CORNWALL) LTD " NEWLYN • PENZANCE • ENGLAND SENTINEL RECORDS COPYRIGHT 1970


Recorded August 31st 1970
Flipback laminated sleeve

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